Put simply, chat is open. You can say whatever you want. If someone wants to tell me I am a "fucking asshole and shit at the game and you need to uninstall", they can. That's simply the definition of chat.
Pings are extremely limited. There's a dot, an exclamation point, a question mark, and a "I'm coming" symbol. All of those have very legitimate uses in game. If someone happens to use it 6 times and gets limited, it's not inherently toxic. If someone is tilted by someone using pings, there's really not any good reason to punish someone for pinging... it's just like emotes. It's extremely obvious when someone is flaming or being toxic in chat. Spamming a ping 6 times is hardly obviously toxic. It's not like chat where someone can say very toxic things if they want - they're limited to the few symbols they have to use, and if they somehow are able to tilt you by using those symbols... I'm not sure what to say.
There is a line that must be drawn between "allowable game mechanic" and "something that we can punish for". If you start punishing someone for "ping spam" (which isn't really spam, as you're rate limited to 6), where do you draw the line?
I do respect that people have different opinions than me on this - some people feel that ping spam is legitimate abuse that should be punished. It is not, however, anywhere near the same as chat which can be heavily, continuously, and specifically abused.
The other thing to consider is that if they don't want to chat, they don't have to. If you remove someone's ability to ping, you are effectively removing the easiest, fastest, and most utilized form of communication from their game.
